the2ndrule Issue 14
The 2ndRule
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Mar 2001 email edition
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Web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule
Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Considering Transgression in Kuala Lumpur [Alvin Pang]
2. The Writer's Family, Abridged [Alfian Bin Sa'at]
3. Merlion [Ng Yi-Sheng]
4. Missing ( )rizon( ) [Heman Chong]
5. Eden, and Other Voices [brandon lee]
6. 1976 (chapter 1) [Ben Puah]
7. King Kong's MTV [Cyril Wong]
8. To Feed on the Ordinary [adrenmole & spurs]
9. Open (Relationship) [Jason Wee]
Editorial
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This editorial. Will be short. Because this. Is a bumper issue.
What does activism mean in Singapore in the 21st century? Forwarding email petitions? Raising your voice, not hell, in Speakers' Corner? Voting on-line?
April Fool is just round the corner. What better date than that to grab apathy by the collar and shake him till his loose change showers out of his pockets? Then let him down, dust his shoulder, pat his cheek, and tell him it's all a good-natured prank.
The 21st century activist has a sense of humour. He bombs police cars with roses. She is an anarchist who obeys traffic signs. He does spoofs of advertisements. She reads headlines like footnotes.
Their weapons are made of irony.
Make sure your seatbelts. Are long enough. Because this is gonna be. A bumpy issue.
- Alfian Bin Sa'at
email : the2ndrule@hotmail.com
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2ndRule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Ong Ee-ing, Judith H
Contributors : Alvin Pang, Ng Yi-Sheng, Heman Chong, brandon lee, Ben Puah, Cyril Wong, adrenmole & spurs, Jason Wee
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Considering Transgression in Kuala Lumpur, circa 2000
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you prowl the sidewalk like one hunted by unseen foes. Predator
yourself, nothing in your eyes but seizes road, calculates approach, and
there - a timely flock of shoppers cross, you with them, transgress.
Is there nothing you will not do? Lock yourself in the quiet nothings
of poetry, face down your conscience in a staring match of silence?
The radio plays Mozart over and over and he is no less dead.
You're going blind, and maybe deaf. The screeching of your cats,
sound of tires burning, what used to be the cry of lovers abandoned
to desire, crossing divides between need and faith. Slick of wet skin, utter
-ed indiscretions, the shiver and purr of passion or rage,
no way of drawing the line.
On the streets of KL the lights outlast common sense, but the jazz is good and plays
past midnight. Espresso & wine flow beyond reason, fistfuls of new ringgit change
hands, night-crawlers under 30 celebrate a certain kind of freedom. Morning
steals the loose tongues and easy reckonings, as it does way down south,
night is the real foreign country here, but in the Jalan Imbi gloom, everyone's a tourist:
taking in the sights, buying power, fraternizing with the natives. If love
were the only thing holding you back, you'd be in there with the rest
of the dingy lights and overripe perfumed flesh so overused and brittle
it would crack like old glass. The mirror would answer your fragility with fatigue,
because that's what you paid for, to be told over and over that you are a man
infallibly doomed to the rest of your life.
Back home, Christmas has occupied Orchard Road; treetops become borders
patrolled by fairy-light. Traffic jostles restlessly, and no one's giving ground
this late in the day. Everything has come to this: whether you breach
what holds you, violate known spaces, horizons heretic as life,
breakthroughs shining clear as any sin. Will you
stare across the hours, numb with the sheer idea of crossing?
Or step into churn, bear the stain of love, risk nothing
but nothingness, come into your own?
- Alvin Pang
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I held you. You held back.
You were always holding back.
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The Writer's Family, Abridged
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My father is a fierce man. My mother is not so fierce. My father has a way with words such that sometimes when he wants to ask a question it ends up like an accusation. For example, 'Did you bring your wallet?' becomes 'You didn't bring your wallet,' and 'Are you going to school?' becomes 'You're not going to school.' It often makes me angry but I tell myself far worse than being hurt by bad words is to be hurt by bad grammar.
My mother also has a way with words. But her problem is not with grammar. Since I was young, she has been developing a repertoire of phrases designed to make me feel small, to make me desire smallness, such that I can climb back into her womb and lie still and sinless. Certain words and phrases recur: 'you don't love', 'you don't pity', 'knife in heart'. Far worse than being hurt by bad words is to be hurt by words which aren't.
My father works through symbols. When I come home late, I will find the things in my room damaged by his invisible rage. The phone line for my modem like a sliced vein, my favourite shirt a dissected tangram, theatre flyers wrung into paper croissants. But these metaphors are mine. The symbols my father uses are straightforward: 'If you come home late, you make people angry. If they are angry, their anger leaves a wake.'
There was a time when I bought a pair of do-it-yourself-hobbycraft insects, convinced I could pinfocus my restless energies into something constructive. I punched stencilled shapes out of flat wooden boards and eased edges into slots. A few nights later, coming home way past midnight, I noticed that having finished with my phone cable, my shirts and my theatre flyers, my father had chosen to vent his paternal anguish on my 3-day-old invertebrates.
The next morning I found them pieced together with glue. It was my mother's handiwork, but since I had thrown away the instruction manual, she had created a pair of mutants: the cricket with rickets, the praying mantis gone heretic.
My father is a fierce man, meaning, obvious. My mother is not so fierce; she is subtler. My father taught me how to write fiction: 'A boy comes home late. A father wrecks his room. This is a story. A boy comes home late. A father wrecks his room out of fury. This is a plot.' But my mother concentrates on the details. The disfigured insects now buzz to me: 'Do not break my heart, because even after I mend it I cannot restore it as it was before.' In this manner my mother taught me poetry.
- Alfian bin Sa'at
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You don't have to suffer in silence anymore.
Help is just a phone call away. Haemorrhoid cream!
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Merlion
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In truth he is chained to the columns of the labyrinthine bowels of the
Istana where kebaya priestesses shampoo and condition his mane.
Once a month he is loosed to the sewers reservoirs monsoon drains of the
night where he whets the starry canines of his crescent grin with angbao red.
He feeds on opposition though he has a random feast of souls every hungry
August nipping unwary bottoms on his porcelain offering bowls.
Yet his scales are so syringed with pencils that he stopped bleeding long
ago. His flesh is a mess of white puffy stone that comes off as powder.
His eyes float limp as fishballs. This is what comes of being born in the
dark to a mother fish who very much preferred the spawning of eggs.
He misses his father the lion who from his mother's description sounds more
like a civet cat. He realises that as a hybrid, he cannot breed.
He is sick of the men in white coats who come to jack him off into
test tubes to inhuman genome his dna onto floppy diskettes in order
To artificially pollinate the girls at Underwater World and the Zoo.
He only sees their photos. He wonders about the boys.
He is waiting for that hero that Wu Song that Ninja Turtle who will plunge
to the depths of the island with a magic keris
to divorce his head and tail then sell him sambalised to the nation under a
sign spelling D for delicious to dabao back for the maid and kids.
O what a happy meal what a Ramadan sunset when they find out what they've
missed; carve up the Haw Par Villa dragon and Sharity Elephant;
they'll want more and more until the nation is stripped to the bone
of souvenirs and idols. Then with distended bellies
can we spew forth our own new water.
- Ng Yi-Sheng
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Bonsai Kitten. Origami Crane. Hara-kiri Lemming. Wasabe Horse(radish).
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Missing ( )rizon( )
( ) visu( )l-ess( )y in 3 ( )cts
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st( )rt 11:28( )m 13 M( )rch 2001
1
We're l( )te for our flight to the city of ( )ngels s( )ys Shotsie ( )s she ( )cceler( )tes the Rover ( )long the highw( )y which we suspected w( )s the inf( )mous sixty six but we c( )n't be sure ( )fter ( )ll we've only been here for seven d( )ys ( )nd seven d( )ys only. Come on shouts Shotsie I c( )n't st( )nd these big trucks oh re( )lly oh sure I me( )n who do they think they ( )re ( )nyw( )ys? ( )nd here we ( )re in Tucson, ( )rizon( ). ( )nd here we ( )re in the gre( )t exp( )nse, the gr( )nd nowhere. Sixty seventy eighty ninety f( )ster h( )rder speed up. I s( )w the c( )ctuses become stre( )ks of green ( )nd yellow through the viewfinder of my video c( )mer( ) go Shotsie go. We're not going to m( )ke it we're going to miss the pl( )ne. We'll h( )ve to st( )y in this sm( )ll town forever ( )nd ever till de( )th do us p( )rt. Tucson, ( )rizon( ): the town where Scott ( )nd Curtis live in the hills overlooking everything. Musky dusty objects cluttered ( )round. ( )n open terr( )ce, ( ) b( )lcony, three ch( )irs. ( ) white v( )n. We h( )ve to s( )y goodbye to Scott ( )nd Curtis s( )ys Shotsie ( )nd our Rover sped ( )cross town to s( )y goodbye to Scott ( )nd Curtis. I love the w( )y you communic( )te. I love the w( )y you dress your window front up, it's so pretty I w( )nt to buy everything th( )t's in it. Mirror mirror where's me in this?
2
( )s you h( )ve noticed by now the letter ( ) is missing from ( )ll these words constructed out of letters m( )de up of pictogr( )ms derived from sounds ( )n ( )ct of necessity ( )nd improvis( )tion you see I'm sure you would. The ( ) on my keybo( )rd is missing it fell out of pl( )ce this morning ( )nd dis( )ppe( )red ( )s ( ) result there ( )re no ( )'s in these words constructed out of letters m( )de up of pictogr( )ms derived from sounds. I miss you, ( ). I think I love you. Sh( )ll we get m( )rried in Veg( )s, ( )? ( )fter ( )ll ( )fter ( )ll th( )t's ( )ll we h( )ve. I miss you, ( ). I think I love you. This is re( )lly d( )ngerous d( )ngerous to be in love with ( ) letter from the ( )lph( )bet. You're more th( )n ( ) letter to me, ( ). Oh god I fell for you. I sit here ( )nd w( )it ( )nd w( )it. But you do not c( )ll. I sleep ( )nd dre( )m of nothing. It's Thursd( )y tod( )y ( )nd Frid( )y tomorrow ( )nd you do not c( )ll. I miss you, ( ). I think I love you. Yet the words esc( )pe me I tried I tried to tell you but the words ev( )por( )ted somewhere between my he( )rt ( )nd my mouth oh these clever geo-som( )tic terms. It must be the desert he( )t. It must be the dry hot scorching we( )ther. No cowboy h( )t is going to s( )ve me this time no ( )mount of fluids. Tell you wh( )t. I'll h( )ve dinner prep( )red ( )t ( )bout nine in the evening ( )nd when you get off your shift I'll bring it over to your pl( )ce. It wouldn't be ( )s nice ( )s it w( )s piping hot but ( )t le( )st you c( )n just rest ( )nd h( )ve ( ) proper me( )l with me. Oui? Bien? Non? Here somebody else be( )uty go by fin( )lly nothing left. Winter will still be ( )round when I return to London do you think I still h( )ve ( ) ch( )nce when spring comes? Cross my he( )rt ( )nd hope to die. I miss you, ( ). I think I love you tell me you love me too.
3
With the sun in my eyes the wind in my h( )ir ( )nd the desert ( )ll ( )round me I think b( )ck ( )bout wh( )t I've been up to for the l( )st ten ye( )rs. Nothing m( )tters out here nothing rien, non. In the wilderness the chosen w( )ndered for forty ye( )rs in the wilderness they s( )y Jesus h( )d ( ) ch( )t with S( )t( )n live here on Ch( )nnel Five in the wilderness I will survive. With the sun in my eyes the wind in my h( )ir ( )nd the desert ( )ll ( )round me I think I must h( )ve been stupid ( ) ret( )rd to h( )ve thought ( )ll th( )t w( )s import( )nt essenti( )l indispensible wh( )t my eyes h( )ve seen h( )ve I been blind lost. In the wilderness I remember you Wim Wenders in the wilderness I ( )dore you Michel( )ngelo ( )ntonioni in the wilderness I h( )ve found pe( )ce in you. Nothing m( )tters out here nothing rien, non. I must s( )y you ( )re so right Je( )n B( )udrill( )rd ( )bout ( )meric( ). Wh( )t ( ) coincidence ( )rizon( ), ( )meric( ) ( )nd S( )t( )n ( )ll h( )ve two ( )s in them m( )ybe they're ( )ll the s( )me person ( )fter ( )ll ( )fter ( )ll his symbol is inscribed on the fl( )g; the bright ( )nd be( )utiful Morningst( )r. Nothing m( )tters out here nothing rien, non. Nothing is right or wrong or good or evil or up or down or right or left. Nothing but the sun scorching my neck w( )ter esc( )ping from my skin. I ( )m here. Don't you see? Wh( )t if I told you I'm the devil himself ( )nd th( )t this convers( )tion with you with Jesus with you is the s( )me one th( )t we've h( )d ( )bout two thous( )nd ye( )rs ( )go ( )sking you to fors( )ke ( )ll th( )t you h( )ve ( )ll th( )t you ( )re ( )nd I will give you everything everything ( )nything you ( )sk for ( )nd it will be yours to keep ( )nd it will be yours forever. Wh( )t if I told you now th( )t I ( )m the devil wh( )t would you do would you cry or kiss ( )nd die or ( )sk for your forgiveness? You s( )y th( )t things ch( )nge but they do don't they they do they don't ever for me here in Tucson, ( )rizon( ) but they sure do somewhere else golly like London or Berlin or Sing( )pore or P( )ris or Porto or H( )nnover or Melbourne or B( )rcelon( ) or Beijing don't they tell me they do bec( )use I need to know th( )t this is re( )l is re( )l for you ( )nd me ( )nd ( )nd ( )nd.
end 4:36( )m 17 M( )rch 2001
- Hem( )n Chong ( )k( ) NoSleepRequired
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The advertising jingle that didn't make it:
"Use someone they think they know
To sell them something they think they need."
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From Eden, and other voices
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I.
It must be a madness
Like some vertigo, that makes me see patterns
On women's dresses.
That makes them prisoners, makes them maids or
Assembly lines. Beauty Queens, Showgirls.
On men I see swirls.
Harder to decipher, because they keep changing.
Now they are fine lines, later they are lost
To lust, and run like torn fabric.
There are combovers, wiry and lying.
There are threads woven into paychecks.
Scanlines of televisions left on to the reruns.
They are cracking skin in large hands, or else brows of worry.
They are the words that cannot
Cross the landspace between bodies sleeping on one white sheet.
II.
I know an incredible despair.
Without thinking I see men and women apart
Through windows, under lights.
Through the lens and under the scope
Of our Commerce
Their images come, clarified.
The coded seek
An unnatural freedom
Where those that were
Born free
Drop anchor.
I entertain the thought that time may be running out,
That there will be nothing past our parents.
III.
A generation, this work has been
Undoing us in our bedrooms, living rooms, over kitchen sinks.
Your honest man struggles with identity
Not because someone oppresses him as before,
But because his shirt is a uniform,
His trousers were his father's
And his shoes, a girlfriend's gift.
IV.
How do you show strength, lady?
Once, women kept deep silences and
Mended fraying ends into new strength.
In the dark of night do you
Heal wounds with needle and thread,
Or cut open those your mother
Never found?
And where do you find strength, lover?
Is it in the walls not seen?
To find me returning whole, clean. Sanctified,
While you were being every woman
I could have met,
Maybe - is not jealousy.
V.
If you were to own the land and till it,
Build the house and furnish it
And find yet more wanted of you,
I think you, too,
Through the hardness that pride brings
And horror of seeing the elusive still,
Would be the tyrants we have been
And call it love also.
VI.
But quiet,
Quiet words now.
I can feel the earth
Climb into my toenails.
Natural and real
To keep perfectly still.
The sweet breath
Has stripped me.
Quietly,
our very forms are searching out a grander design.
Our suits of solemnity, for weddings and death,
But hang on our shoulders,
Shreds!
- brandon lee
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Tell the humans to give.
Tell the demons to sympathise.
Tell the gods to restrain.
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1976 (chapter 1)
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mosquitoes are sucking for blood again, always in the wrong place at wrong time. why can't they fucking get a pain-remover! and i could get the left-over of it. i see toys of different sizes everywhere. they seemed to be very busy with their own work and this whole space looked like a toy museum. i tried to jump out of it and found a seed. i attempted to grow a flower out of it and realised that i'm quite good at it in my own way.
but later that little flower just faded off once it started to bloom even though i used a bottle to block caterpillars away from 'it'. i started to have doubts about this 'thing'. i think i really need to have a good bath but not with my head stuck in a pong-pong tree. there are three cats and
each of them is like a giant. i can feel the pressure of their force, trying to conquer that hill to get a slice of fish meat. i find them very clever and outstanding especially when they started to kill one another later on. the black cat won the battle as it was already night.
i want to go and have a swim in the sea. the enjoyment part of it is i never swim before and that's how one could get the best result. by the way, is there vodka ocean? been to so many 'trips' and can't see any good in it anymore. this black crow landed on my head again and nest on it, thinking i'm a 'black' activist. maybe because i'm charcoal outside but my body inside is cooked and ready to be consumed by others. polar bear and panda bear are bears but far apart. they should be captured for circus performances so as to have chance for meeting. there's nothing sad because either one.....
happy new year to u too!!! please keep in touch.
- Ben Puah
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Woodbridge memories:
Q: What is your name? A: I give birth, and my baby fly away.
Q: How old are you? A: I give birth, and my baby fly away.
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King Kong's MTV
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Imagine the sky behind me like an epic soundtrack,
the clouds in a chorus of light, as I trample over
a dozen highways, stamp on vehicles like ants,
clutch the Empire State Building like a tree, bounce fists
off my chest in arrhythmic percussion, roar like a Titan
in a Wagnerian Opera. Listen as I whisper into the ear
of a window, her name. Drawn by that gale
of banana breath, she appears to swoon
into my fist as it opens, her mouth in a glorious O
like Callas on a high note, as I pluck her from her room
like an exotic bird from its gilded cage, rub her
against my chest, feel her microscopic teeth upon
my nipples, shiver with pleasure like an earthquake.
Then watch as I return her to the empty shelf of her flat,
where she vomits onto her lap, hugs herself
to tremble fiercely like a flame. Finally, weep
for the final scene as I return home to solitude,
smell of love and the human rising from my palm,
cataracts of tears from the dark caverns of my eyes.
- Cyril Wong
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Balance:
The left keeps talking about protecting rights.
The right keeps talking about protecting what's left.
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To Feed On The Ordinary (A Film Synopsis)
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The characters can be seen as childlike and simple in a silent way, similar to the style of autistic actors like Charlie Chaplin and maybe Mr. Bean, but without the purposefully comedic manner. Instead, it is the ordinariness (or ordinary absurdity) of the way they carry on with their lives with such
weird habits that should make the film interesting.
One of the most important elements is the HDB walls, flats, flourescent lights, sparse decorations, void decks. To bring out the whole Chungking effect.
Should include toy guns, preferably those loadable six-shot pistols. Like killers or whatever. Chasing the neighbourhood cats. Feeding them at night. Include scenes of millions of bubbles flying through the sunny blue sky with panoramic effect.
Or make it a love story.
Character Sketches:
1. Mask Boy
_ wears a toy mask all the time.
_ include shots of him buying chicken rice or noodles.
_ (can use the shock approach: back view of his head talking to the chicken rice seller and then as he finally collects his change and packet of rice he turns around to face the camera, the mask!)
_ sleeping wearing the mask.
_ riding on bus (panning shot on passing scenery slowly to reveal him wearing a ultra-man mask and looking out the window, possibly he's wearing school uniform and going to school; with other passengers standing stoically holding onto the handrails.)
_ passing a porno vcd roadside stall and then stopping in his tracks dramatically.
2. Book Boy
_ walks around holding a hard-cover book upright, pretending to read it as he walks but actually just holding it, his eyes peering over cautiously like a child, and then darting under, like a spy.
_ include switchovers where he's holding a newspaper with a big hole cut out in the centre.
_ he talks to friends with the book held up and open like a metaphorical barrier, occassionally peppering his speech with random quotations taken from the book.
_ watches television the same way.
_ at the library browsing books, finally choosing a book he likes; the same way people choose clothes, by holding the book up in front of a mirror and covering the lower half of his face. Posing. Make all these seem natural. Finally, he walks out of the library doors, his eyes dancingly delighted. A new book.
Possible Adventures:
1-----K has been playing with his action man figures for many years. One day, all of a sudden, K is shocked by the discovery that his imaginary friends have fallen into a deep coma (caused by doctor Spock). A funeral party results; with a garden burial, toilet flushing, cremation etc...
2-----K wakes up, washes his face, has breakfast, all in a very pristine proper manner and then receives the Straits Times at his door. He then maniacally tears it up, saving only the top right-hand corner of the front page. He evidently uses the newspaper as a calendar.
3-----Then on New Year's day, there is no Straits Times (as we all know). K invites his friends
4-----on a mad rampage,vandalising public toilet cubicles.
5-----J adopts a stone at a stone-adoption centre (puts rock in refrigerator). At the ending scene, he throws the rock into a forest (or the sea).
6-----Since the camera filming is not going to be of cinematic quality, just make it a lousy documentary of their life in a single day. Taking the MRT train to Parklane Arcade to play arcade. Walk around for a while. Go home. Dinner. Watch channel 8 with family. Sleep.
7-----Drinking, going drunk, swearing at the camera "fuck off."
8-----Adventures of the SBS fare-evader. Can include normal dialogue and quarreling on the long busride.
ETc eTC eTc Etc EtC....................................................
- spurs the stupid dog and adrenmole the irritating nick in revenge against
the irc channels which don't let them say fuck
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oh poor miseducated boy...don't you know the basic courtesy.
what i shouldn't do after patting a cat is wash my hands immediately.
- adrenmole
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Open
(Relationship)
--------------
When you asked if you could
See me later in the morning,
Don't I accept the irony when
You repeat those words elsewhere?
I remember learning to swim,
Lowering my eyes into the pool until
They arrived at the illusory horizon
Between the known and the unknown. I wonder
How an answer could walk on
So slender a surface.
- Jason Wee
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Post-Coital Bliss version 1.1
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Considering Transgression in Kuala Lumpur, (c) 2001 Alvin Pang
The Writer's Family, Abridged, (c) 2001 Alfian Bin Sa'at
Merlion, (c) 2001 Ng Yi-Sheng
Missing ( )rizon( ), (c) 2001 Heman Chong
Eden, and Other Voices, (c) 2001 brandon lee
1976 (chapter 1), (c) 2001 Ben Puah
King Kong's MTV, (c) 2001 Cyril Wong
To Feed on the Ordinary, (c) 2001 adrenmole & spurs
Open (Relationship), (c) 2001 Jason Wee
